AFR podcast features Leighton Flowers refuting Calvinism

Jenna Ellis: Foreign. Welcome to On Demand. This is our AFR exclusive podcast where we do a deep dive into issues that are trending and topics that you need to hear about from guests that you need to hear from and you love to hear from. Today we, I'm so grateful that we also have the podcast side because we don't have to take artificial breaks like radio. We can go a little longer and we can actually do the deeper dive. And we're going of need that today because the topic has, is this public debate that was sparked by my good friend Dinesh d' Souza on X recently talking about Calvinism and limited atonement. for those who regularly tune in to this broadcast or also the radio side, you will be very familiar with this debate. my guest today, Leighton Flowers, who is a phenomenal, debater in terms of refuting Calvinism, used to be a Calvinist himself and now is a provisionist. And he'll explain a little bit more about what that means. has, has been very familiar to my audience because I've had him on a number of times talking about this. But I think it's important that we re engage this, not just for the merit of the topic itself, but also for how we talk about the topics because a lot of this has surrounded not just the arguments that Dinesh is promulgating, but how the Calvinist advocates are responding back. They've been accusing Dinesh of. Well, you're just a political commentator, so basically, how dare you enter into this discussion, the, the refutation. Well, you're not, you haven't read all of the, the Church Fathers on all of this while he's read the Bible. And maybe, just maybe we can get our theology from the Bible itself, not having to read secondary sources, even though, you know, those are okay. But we need to get our doctrine, primarily from Scripture. And then they also broadly level, this accusation that if a person doesn't believe in the doctrine of Calvinism, a person must not understand it. and of course this is a logical fallacy, but there's been a lot of back and forth on all of this. So to kind of wade through this and, and this is a very important discussion and I hope that you will, stick through the entire broadcast because, we have a lot to cover here. I want to welcome in Leighton Flowers and he of course is an author of the, the seminal book the Potter's Promise, which, you know, goes through a lot of this including Romans 9, which is the main text that Calvinists try to use, to advance their, their perspective. And he also, you can find all of his works and hosts his broadcast called Soteriology101. you can find [email protected] of course, Soteriology, meaning the doctrine of salvation. And that's basically what we're talking about. So, Leighton, thanks so much for joining again and with all of that. That, you know, is kind of a very, very broad overview.

Jenna Tulip: Calvinism has been controversial since Augustine introduced doctrines

let me first get your thoughts overall on this, debate. And I think that Dinesh was actually really surprised that, he was met with such vitriol, that, you know, we've now kind of collectively termed, you know, the beehive or the hornet's nest that we've stirred up of the Calvinists. and so I think he didn't quite think he would get this type of response.

Leighton Flowers: Yeah, of course I knew he would because I've been doing that for several years and so matter, ah, of fact, when I was writing my dissertation back, at NewSong Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and, my professors saw what I was writing on, they said, well, good luck to you. You're about to step in it and get, all kinds of backlash. And they were, of course, very correct. and it is a hot topic. And that's one of the interesting points about this, Jenna, is that ever since this particular viewpoint was introduced by Augustine in the 5th century, who by his own testimony was a former Gnostic, in Gnosticism is a deterministic philosophy. He's the first, even according to many Calvinistic historians, to really introduce and systematize these ways of thinking, the Calvinistic or more predestinarian, you know, God predestined whatsoever comes to pass. Kinds of concepts, that you hear from Calvinists today started with the 5th century with Augustine, and ever since then, it has been one of the most controversial doctrines in the church. It always. And it's not controversial among heathens. You'll often hear, well, the gospel is supposed to be controversial. Yeah. To people who aren't believers. But we're talking about the unity of the church here. And the church has split over these doctrines since they were introduced in the 5th century, over and over and over again. And one of the ways I know that the apostles and the early church fathers didn't teach these doctrines is that there's no record of what you saw from, when Dinesh posted these things online. And that is the backlash of Everyone who disagrees and all of the conflict that goes on among Christians, that is a mark of when this topic is introduced. Because every time this topic is introduced, Christians start disagreeing with other Christians. And we don't see this disagreement arise until the 5th century with Augustine proving in my estimation that the apostles and the earliest church fathers did not teach these doctrines. And so what Dinesh is experiencing is what's been experienced ever since these doctrines were introduced. And any one of us who stand up against these doctrines is going to get a backlash from the very, more deterministic, theistic, Deterministic camp or Calvinistic camp who insists that God is the one who ordains whatsoever comes to pass, which includes whether or not you accept or reject the gospel.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and it's such a, it's such a different view on salvation and on the understanding of why we evangelize, the understanding of how we read, the rest of Scripture. And so, you know, before we kind of go further, why don't you describe what it is that the Calvinists believe in terms of limited atonement, and this deterministic theology and the response to that, that ultimately, you know, you've kind of labeled the provisionist model, because Calvinists of course say, well, you have to either be Calvinist or Arminian. And I disagree with that. and so I think there is a better way to simply have the plain reading of scripture evidence what it does absolutely well.

Leighton Flowers: Tulip, the acrostic. Tulip has become known as kind of the five points of Calvinism. And even some Calvinists don't necessarily like that acrostic. They have adapted it over the years. R.C. sproul is known for kind of changing some of the letters to make it sound a little bit more palatable or a little more biblically accurate according to the way they would like to describe it. But it's become kind of a catch all way of explaining what distinguishes Calvinism from the rest of us. And the T stands for total depravity, which is this idea that you are born guilty, for what Adam did. And not only guilty, but also incapable of responding positively to God's grace through the gospel. And so even though you're born guilty, even when somebody comes to you with a gospel, you don't want to receive it. You'll see it as detestable in your eyes because of your corrupt nature from birth. And this is according to God's decree. So it didn't happen by accident. God decrees whatsoever comes to pass, which include this condition you're born in according to Calvinists. And so you're born hating God. And you can't do otherwise. You can't want to do otherwise. You'll hear a lot of Calvinists. Well, you could if you wanted to, but that's the whole point. You can't want to because you have no real control over your desires on Calvinism, because those are decreed by God too. And so your, your desires are so corrupt from birth, you've inherited that from Adam that you will always say no to the gospel. You will hate the gospel, you will hate the things of God. You may do some altruistic things, you could do some nice things. It's not as means you're as bad as you could be. It just means that you're never going to accept the gospel unless you were picked before you were born. This is unconditional election the you. And so before the creation of the world, according to Calvinism, God has chosen certain individuals unconditionally. In other words, he doesn't look through time or he doesn't foresee their faith or anything about them. He just unilaterally picks certain people. He elects those people and those are the people that he died for. He sent Jesus to die for his elect, and he only sent Jesus to die for those people. Not the sins of the whole world as the Bible tells us, but for the sins of the elect and the elect alone. And these, he irresistibly, this is the eye he irresistibly graces, meaning he effectually calls them, he brings them to a new nature. some say that he gives them a new heart. And so they're born with this corrupt heart. And these elect people that he's chosen, he gives them a new heart, changing their very ontological nature, making their desires change and want to come to the message of the gospel, want to believe it, otherwise they never would. And then perseverance is. Those he's chosen, of course, will persevere to the end. They are finally the ones who will be saved in the end. and not everyone who seems to come to Christ will persevere because there's this thing called effervescent grace according to Calvin, that he does give people, a measure of grace, but it's not, it's just enough maybe to make them think they're Christians, but they're not really born again believers and they will eventually fall away. And so that's how they explain those who seem to fall away from the faith or Those who renounce the faith is that there's this evanescent grace that is not real, true saving grace. And so there's these explanations that Calvinists and different Calvinists have different explanations. By the way, not all Calvinists are, you know, following Jon Calvin in specific. There's all different sorts of kinds of Calvinism. So every one of them is going to use different vernacular. that's one of the reasons you're always going to be accused by somebody of misrepresenting Calvinism, even though you may be reading Jon Calvin himself. because there's just many different sorts of Calvinists, you know, lower Calvinists, like, you know, and I know you used to work with Jon MacArthur. Jon MacArthur was more of a moderate type of Calvinist, a dispensational kind of Calvinist. And so he sounded very different than maybe an RC Sproul kind of Calvinist, who came from more of a Presbyterian line. So you're never going to fully represent every form of Calvinism out there, but these are the major tenants, and that is you're born unable to believe the gospel unless you were picked before you were born. Jesus died for you and irresistibly graces you and causes your nature to change to want Him. In other words, you're born unable to want God unless He wants you. And if he wants you, he'll make you want Him. And if he, if you do, if you are chosen, then you will want him for the rest of your life until you die. And you will be the one in heaven. Everyone else, this, this is the reprobate, the non elect. And a lot of times the Calvinists don't like to talk about those people because it sounds really unfair to those people. Because they're born a reprobate, they don't have any control over it. God literally condemns people for something they have absolutely no control over for eternity in a place called hell. And they have no control over whether they're born a reprobate or an elect person. Now, a lot of Calvinists. Oh, that's misrepresentation. Well, I think it's just, it's called that because I'm not putting it palatably, I'm not putting it in nice flowery language. I'm not saying he just passed by them and let them go their own way because that's the way they'll want to say it. But the truth of the matter is they're going their own way because that's the way they were born. And they don't have Any control over the fact they were born that way and they were born a reprobate. They certainly don't have any control over the fact that they were born, passed over before the creation of the world. And so they can't really get around this really difficult pill. Matter of fact, even Jon Calvin called reprobation a dreadful doctrine.

John Piper says Calvinists reject biblical doctrines because they're not biblical

And he, and he even talks about how he really struggled with it most Calvinist RC Sproul talked about how he was drug kicking and screaming into this. Jon, Piper talks about how he wept for three days after being introduced these doctrines and becoming convinced that they were truly biblical. and many other examples of Calvinists talking about how we naturally reject and repulse by these doctrines, because they're just so horrific when you really begin to think about them. I think that's our God given conscience telling us we should reject these doctrines because they're not biblical doctrines.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the interesting things I think about Dinesh entering into this debate because he's evidencing what I think a lot of us who are not Calvinists share that if you as a rational human being and God gave us our reasoning capacity, if you simply read the Scripture without any other, you know, outside influences or a or a predisposition through a lens of Calvinist doctrine, if you just read the Scriptures, you don't arrive at the conclusion that God did not give us the capacity to choose or not to believe in the gospel truth of Christ. you just don't get there. And so it seems like a lot of these Calvinists are in, in their view, you know, the superior intellectuals because they've kind of attained this higher enlightenment that you know, those of us who are just you know, new to this debate or you know, clearly haven't studied as they often will posit, you know, you just haven't you haven't learned enough and you haven't studied enough to arrive at this higher conclusion. But the reality I think is that when you just read Scripture as it is and and infer the plain meaning, you don't arrive at a deterministic conclusion for a variety of reasons. just because we simply see that you know, God says in Scripture that you know, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and that he provides the free gift of salvation to all and whosoever will should come to him. And we see throughout Scripture this this offering in love. And we also see the the divine characteristics of God. And I know Calvinists, you take exception to, this, this idea that the characteristics of God being infinitely loving and that he also has, justice and mercy, that they say, well, if you are imputing your own idea of, of what love and justice and mercy means, then you are in a humanistic way saying that your view of those concepts are the characteristics and attributes of God. But what they fail to recognize is that those characteristics and attributes we define because God himself as the person of truth, has defined them for us. And so our understanding of what justice means is, is given by God himself. And so he's not going to give us a concept of justice and then contradict it by his own nature and as applied to the doctrine of salvation.

Leighton Flowers: Absolutely. Well, and we've mentioned Jon MacArthur. He even wrote a book on the love of God because he was challenging higher Calvinists like AW Pink and others who argue that God does not love all people, he only loves his elect. And Jon MacArthur, being a more moderate Calvinist, was saying, no, heaven forbid, we can't say that because Jesus wouldn't be the atoning sacrifice and qualify as the sacrifice because the law says to love your enemies. And if we say that Jesus only loved the elect and he didn't love his other enemies, then he would not have met the standard of the law and he could not qualify as our sacrifice. And so he makes an argument that no, Jesus actually loves everyone, the elect and the reprobate. He has a common love for, for everyone. Now he would go on to argue where I would disagree that he has a salvific love for his elect. And this is where I write an article in response to MacArthur with respect to him saying, that's not real love. I don't believe, because according to the definition Paul gives us under inspiration in First Corinthians 13, the love chapter is, he says, you can give, all your money to the poor, the benevolence. And that's oftentimes what Calvinists will point to. God gives rain and sunshine to the, to the reprobate. And so that's an act of love and mercy. He lets them live on this earth, he lets them enjoy the spoils of this world. And therefore that's a common love that God has for everybody. Well, that's not love according to, Paul. He says, you can give all that you benevolence, all you have to the poor, but if you have not love, you have nothing. In other words, he separates benevolence giving gifts to the poor from Love. And then he goes on to describe what love is. As you well know, love is kind, is good, it's selfless. I mean it does not seek its own. And yet the Calvinistic system is based upon God seeking his own glory and his own. And everything is about him getting his own glory according to the Calvinistic view. But we know God is love. And this is where I contend with MacArthur to try and I appreciate the fact that he's trying to defend, you know, obviously Christ as the atoning sacrifice that qualifies as obey the law. And he's fighting against the higher Calvinist that's trying to go out there and say God doesn't really love everybody in the world. But I think he doesn't go near far enough because he doesn't take on the definition of love that the Bible gives us. That it's, it's, it's not self seeking, that it is kind. It values the other person and puts others before themselves. It's what Jesus was. he stops and helps his enemies on the side of the road, doesn't just pass them by. That's literally the vernacular that Calvinists will use as to what God does with the reprobate. The enemies of God, he passes them by, he lets them go their own way. That's exactly what the story of the Good Samaritan tells us not to do. You don't just pass by your enemies, you stop to help them. That's a good neighbor. That's what good people do. Well, our God is recognizably good. He dies for his enemies. And the Calvinistic system seems to be more about God's control of his enemies than his self sacrificial love for them. And that's one of the reasons I'm contending with it. I think it is a false way of understanding what the Bible teaches us about the character and the goodness of God.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and I fully agree with that. because the Calvinist would posit that condemning some is necessary to display God's wrath. And that without, this sort of, as one commentator put it, kind of this yin yang sort of wrath and mercy, which I think is actually a really good way to frame what the Calvinists are actually doing. That it's more in Buddhist theory actually than it is grounded in Scripture. Because we know that God didn't even need to create anything. I mean he did for his own sovereign purposes, but it's not like he lacked something within the context of the Trinity, that he lacked a creature or A created worshiping him or the ability to display some of his attributes. And so therefore he necessitated, and he needed to to have creation in order to express that, you know, that that goes against you know, the fundamental doctrines, God of Christology, of the Trinity, I mean all of those things. And interestingly, and I want to read this from this this commentator online, his name is Timothy Renfro and I hadn't heard of him before. You know, I was kind of seeing some of the comments in this debate and he apparently denies some other essential doctrines like penal substitution. So I'm not really sure where his entire perspective is coming from. So I'm not you know, openly suggesting that, you know, all of his work is good, but thought that this comment in particular was. And he says this Leighton, he says as, as Calvinist pastor and theologian Jon Piper says, quote, what restrains God's will to save all people in is his supreme commitment to uphold and display the full range of his glory through the sovereign demonstration of his wrath and mercy, unquote. God's glory is like a wrath, slash, mercy, yin and yang. On Calvinism, Piper quotes Jonathan Edwards in saying it is necessary that there should be evil because the display of the glory of God could not, but be imperfect and incomplete without it. On this view, evil is the complement and the completion of the good. Compare Edwards statement with this quotation from Tai Chi Ching, one of the foundational texts of Buddhism. Under heaven all can see beauty is beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good is good only because there is evil. This is different than the classical biblical understanding of good and evil. Christianity has taught that evil is the privation and the perversion of the good. Evil is likened to darkness, disorder and desolation. Genesis 1:2. It is the lack of light, order and fullness. Evil depends on good, as evil only quote, unquote exists as a privation of that which is good. But good does not require evil to exist. Good can exist independently and sufficiently without evil. But the Calvinist says that the glory of God's mercy requires contrast with the glory of his wrath and vice versa. The Calvinist essentially has a Buddhist view of God's glory. What do you think?

Leighton Flowers: Yeah, I can relate to the idea that the reason this gets into theodicy.

CS Lewis says real choice is necessary for real love and relationship

Why does evil exist? And I highly recommend CS Lewis the book Problem, Problem of Pain. from my particular perspective, it's really, really good. and so why does evil exist? Well, because real choice is necessary for real love and relationship is basically his conclusion. Why even create a world of automatons where he pulls the strings is what C.S. lewis. And he goes further into depth on that concept and writes beautifully for those that want to dive into that. But there is a sense in which we can appreciate the good by seeing the evil in this world. And we can come to love and appreciate God for his provisions in a world that's evil. But I agree with exactly what you were reading is that it doesn't need that. In other words, God's goodness, it doesn't need evil and suffering in order to be what it is. but choice is needed. And for real choice and real relationship, real choice, you know, you can't have, someone controlling whether or not you love them or not. You can't have him pushing the button, the love button, and saying, okay, this person loves me now because I pushed the button. That's not real love. Real love comes from real choice. And if a person has the ability to go good, C.S. lewis argues, then they have to have the ability to go bad. And this is where God has given us the choice. As in the garden with a tree. I think it's the same basic concept, of why the father in the prodigal son story gave his son the inheritance. He didn't have to give it to him. he chose to give it to him. Why? Because through that real choice and through squandering his wealth, through going his own way, he can learn what it is to be without God and to be separate from God and to begun to appreciate and to love the relationship he can have with the Father. And so there's a sense in which, yes, the reason God gave us a choice is that we can, we can fully experience this life, with, with when we're separated from him, so that we come to appreciate life with him and that we can come to understand why it's so important for us to have a life in Christ and have relationship with Him.

Some Calvinists accuse me of misrepresenting Calvinism

And I really think it's important to note that it's one of those things that continues to come up, is that the evil that happens in this world, according to the Calvinistic confessions, is what God has brought to pass by his sovereign decree. And again, some Calvinists, they accuse me of misrepresenting Calvinism or make it sound more harsh than it really is. let me read from Jon Piper's website. Jon Piper is probably arguably the most influential Calvinistic pastor in the world today. And it says this on his website, even it's still there today. It says God brings about all things in accordance with his will. It isn't just that God manages to turn evil aspects of our world to good for those that love Him. It is rather that He Himself brings about these evil aspects. This includes, again I'm quoting, this includes God even having brought about the Nazis brutality at Berkewald and Alchowitz, and as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child. End quote. In other words, on Calvinism, God brings about by sovereign decree every single thing that happens, including the most heinously evil things that you can imagine by his decree, in order to demonstrate his wrath and his power and his justice. That does not make any rational sense to me. It seems to me that God can demonstrate his wrath through the crucifixion alone because that would demonstrate his wrath or even just a small percentage of people like the Hitlers of the world. And why not regenerate the rest of the world and just let a few, outliers kind of represent the wrath of God? You don't need the majority of people, to be reprobates in order to represent God's wrath. And so that argument just does not hold water as far as I can tell. And it's certainly not based on anything I see in Scripture.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and that's one of the other chief, complaints that the Calvinist responders have had to Dinesh's arguments. Your arguments. My arguments is that, well, you know, somehow you're getting reason involved in this. You're saying, well, this just doesn't add up. And, you know, how dare you try to say that, you know, God needs to be under, some, human understanding. And I think that that mischaracterizes the whole idea of the debate itself, because why are we even having a conversation then if we can't do what the Bible expressly says, which is, come, let us reason together, and if we are to know God at all, and if he has revealed Himself at all, which he has through general and then specific revelation, clearly he intended us to know something about him. And we are able to, by virtue of the, the faculties that he has provided us, come to an understanding. And it doesn't mean that we fully comprehend God by any. But it does mean that reason and the ability to logically infer and to, you know, discount things that don't make sense, you know, and to, to contemplate the mystery of Scripture, there is some level of human reason that necessarily has to be Part of this equation. And so I reject the Calvinist assertion that if we arrive to a conclusion through logic or reason, that somehow that is now imputing humanism into the Scripture because we can't even read scripture or understand it at all unless we use our human faculties. And that's part of God's design.

Leighton Flowers: Yeah, I had someone on Twitter who responded to me and says, well you're just using human logic as opposed to what, what else am I supposed to be using here? of course I'm going to use human reason. That's what I have. That's what God gave me. I don't have you know, an alien, logic. I don't have a divine logic. I mean is divine logic different than human logic? Is two plus two something different for God than it is for us? And CS Lewis warned about this when he says, if you say that his black is our white and our white is his black, we can say God is we know not what and we might as well be worshiping an all powerful, demon. He goes on to argue and I'm paraphrasing but basically he's trying to warn people to say we've got to have some measurements, based upon how we understand God. And if you're not using good reason and good logic to come up to here. Here's the key point Jenna, is that the, the reasoning that we're using and the logic that we're using is trying to decide between two long held views of the Bible and interpretations of the Scripture. Because Calvinists, just like non Calvinists, they, they both believe that they're basing their views on scripture. When I was A Calvinist for 10 years, I honestly thought Romans 9, Ephesians 1 and that some of these texts they were teaching Calvinistic theology. And I, it because I really thought it was biblical. And so I assume most Calvinists are good people who are trying to be true to the word of God. But what many of them don't take the time to do is to understand the other interpretation from the other side. They don't hear out the other side. They just assume we don't care about the Bible or that we're just, this is just emotional for you. I saw so many people watching your threads. Especially as a woman, I don't know how you stand it, but it's like every other guy that responded to you said stop being so emotional, stop, stop thinking with your heart, start thinking with your head, woman. I was just, I just, it just irked me so bad. To hear people going that way. And they don't do that as much to me, but they still do it sometimes. Oh, you just can't, you just can't swallow it because it's just too hard for you. Listen, I taught these things for 10 years of my life when I thought they were true. And I'm not rejecting them just because I'm emotional. I'm rejecting them because I'm reading the word of God and I've come to a different understanding of Romans 9 than you do. And why can't we look at that together without being accused of. Well, you just don't understand Calvinism or. Oh, you're just being too emotional.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And, and this is where too it seems that for a lot of the Calvinists, they, they act a lot like leftists in, in this way where they approach a debate not agreeing first on the terms of reality, that okay, we're two human beings that can come and reason together and that reality as we know it exists kind of define, some of the things that we agree on first. And so then, you know, they end up with all of these, these you know, strawman, the red herring, I mean, all kinds of logical fallacies, you know, all the ad hominems, like suggesting that you know, somehow because I'm a woman I can't participate in these debates and you know, I mean just all kinds of ridiculous nonsense, because they're not actually willing to come and agree on the terms of the debate to begin with. And even when they do agree a debate, and I've seen, you know, a lot of debates with you and various Calvinists, it seems that we know, whatever response you provide, like for example on Romans 9, rather than answering that, they say, well, you know, you just don't understand. You haven't actually answered my assertion. No, you've answered it, you just disagree. And so they, they, it becomes a debate about the debate instead of the merits of the actual arguments themselves. And in that way it's very, it's a very leftist model that tries to change the terms of the debate midstream. it tries to ask the question, well, you know, do we, does language, ah, even have meaning? Or you know, all of these things that if we're not going to agree on reality, then why even have the conversation? And that's part of what frustrates me about a lot of this. Because these, these conversations are worth having, doctrinal discussions within the context of Christianity and what Christians believe these are Important conversations. But if we're not going to actually get to the merit, we're just going to talk about, the person or, you know, the debate itself, then we're not really getting anywhere.

Leighton Flowers: Absolutely. A friend of mine, David Allen, he says that Calvinists have the same vocabulary but a different dictionary. And that you often see this where they will say things that we go, well, amen, of course we believe God is sovereign, for example, but how are you defining sovereignty? and of course we believe God loves all people. How are you defining love? As I discussed earlier, and there's so many of these kinds of conversations where we talk past each other because the terms aren't being fully defined. And this is another one of the reasons you'll get accusation of misrepresentation because different Calvinists use different terminology, through different traditions. I mean, depending on what tradition you kind of follow, different kinds of Calvinists have different kinds of reasons for their Calvinism. And so it becomes really difficult sometimes to fully represent the view, but the way in which it's responded, like Dinesh for example, who's obviously a very intelligent man, I don't think anybody can listen to Dinesh for more than five minutes and realize he's not, you know, he's just obviously off the charts intelligent. he does read and look at what he's talking about before he does a broadcast. And so he gathers information and then he produces good materials for people to engage. And there's one, man that I've debated a couple of times, James White, who is a well known Calvinistic apologist who gets into these debates quite regularly. and his response to Dinesh is basically to talk down to him like, Dinesh, you need to stop and you need to start reading. Here's a reading list for you because you obviously don't know what you're talking about yet. and then kind of mockingly says, you just don't get what you're saying. Even though I've been studying this my entire adult life. And all the points Dinesh hit on are the major points of contention. And James White seems to act as if you can't bring up those points of contention. If he's answered those points of contention in his book or in a broadcast, and so he'll go off on, oh, if only he knew all of my books and all of the things I've already answered all these problems. Well, if that's the case, then none of us need to be talking about anything. Because I guarantee you, every Armenian, every Provisionist. Every Calvinist, every group out there has already answered in some book somewhere, the contentions with their particular views. The reason that Dinesh is bringing up these points is that we don't believe that your answers to them are sufficient.

He accuses free will advocates or provisionists of worshiping human vision

We disagree with your answers, Dr. White. It's that simple. And then he accuses, and you get this a lot on X. He accuses free will advocates or provisionists like myself, Armenians like myself, I fall more in the Armenian camp than I do the Calvinist camp, obviously, even though there's some distinctions there. But, he accuses us of worshiping the idol of free will. and this is a common refrain, they just, you guys just love free will. You just want to make men more powerful than they really are. you want to give man the glory. You're a humanist. This is the often, trope that you'll hear from Calvinists repeated over and over again. And, you know, that's a lot like accusing us. If, for example, you had a, you know, a property and it had a new trespassing sign and a person trespass on your property, and then they try to claim, well, I'm, I can't see very well. I have bad vision and I didn't see the sign. And, and you see the video of where he walked up to the sign and saw it. we also have proof of his, from his doctor, that he has perfect vision. 2020 vision. And you start making the case, no, this guy has perfect vision. You can even see a video where he looked at the sign, he walked in, and you make a case that this guy is culpable because he saw the sign, he walked in anyway, and then he goes, well, you just worship the idol of human vision. What? That's just stupidity. I'm not worshiping the idol of human vision. I'm saying that the man's culpable because he could see. And it's exactly what we're arguing with. Free will. We're saying that people who reject Christ are culpable because they could have accepted Christ. They had what they needed. They're not rejecting a God who doesn't love them, a Christ that didn't die for them. They're rejecting a God who loves and provides for them. That we're not defending the power of man's humanity and his will. We're defending their culpability because they're rejecting a God who actually loves and provides for them. And if the Calvinists can't see that, then I can't help them because they've got to recognize that our motives are pure, whether they like it or not. We're trying to do a good thing here by defending the blameworthiness of the sinner and the character of the God who seems to want everybody to be saved. According to many, passages throughout the scripture where he holds out his hands to them all day long and whether he longs to gather them and you know, I do not desire that any perish but all to come to repentance and passage after passage after passage of God longing and desiring for things to happen that don't end up happening and him then rebuking and punishing people for doing things that he wanted them to do. And yet behind the scenes we're supposed to believe what the Calvinists tell us, that God's really the one controlling what they desire to do. And it's just absolutely absurd. And I think we have to call that out absolutely.

Jenna Ellis: And you know, and this, this theory as well, when they say, you know, oh, you're just, worshiping the idol of human free will or you're giving man more a station than you know, then God gives him. Well, I, I think in the Calvinist model to suggest that, that God just for his own sovereign purposes, ah, selects who he condemns to hell with and basically offer salvation, but not really, that's actually a lower view of anthropology and humanity than the Bible actually provides. And they never want to get to that. And they never want to get to, you know, this understanding that, these are debatable questions. And so the accusations are, are again are straw men. They're, they're wanting to put up something that we're not actually arguing and then just saying, oh, well, free will is an idol. Or you're you're wanting man to be greater than, than God has said. Because, you know, look at how, there are places in Scripture that says, you know, who are you o man? To you know, to question God. And that's true. But, but we can ask questions about God. Those aren't two contradictory things. And and so it seems that the, the Calvinist, and I was thinking about this actually in listening to your broadcast, this week where you, you went and it was a little over two hours. I'd encourage listeners to, to view that as well, on the YouTube channel for Soteriology 101. because Leighton goes into, you know, a lot more, of this whole conversation and as you were describing, how you taught your own children, the, the difference between how we cannot attain salvation ourself. we can't accomplish the work that Christ did on the cross. But we also can understand that concept and we can say, oh, I need God's help and I need him to finish the work. And then I can, of my own free will, I can ask him for help and can say, yes, I am relying solely on you. I was, I was reminded. And you know, and of course the, the Calvinists are saying, you know, well, if you analogize it all then, you know, you're taking away from God's word. But these, these kind of help us distill broader concepts into a more conceptual, understanding.

Calvinists say faith is not consideration exchanged for salvation

And so I was thinking in the concept of contract law, you know, as a lawyer, you know a lot of these, these concepts like you know, justice and fairness and you know, all of these things, of sufficiency and atonement, I mean they're, these are principles that we impute into civil society because we recognize that there are principles that God has given us. And so in contract law terms, I think the Calvinist purposefully tries to say that we as non Calvinists treat man's acceptance of salvation as though it were consideration in a contract, something exchanged for God's promise of salvation, something we bring of value. And so if faith is the human contribution that completes the bargain, they argue, then salvation is partly earned and man has grounds to boast. But this I think confuses what we actually mean as the condition of acceptance that's actually attached to a free gift. And we're not arguing that we are a party to a contract of salvation and we bring something of value to God. We are, in contract law terms, it's not an offer and acceptance and a bargain for exchange. It's a conditional gift. So suppose I offer you a gift and say it's yours if you come and receive it. Your acceptance doesn't purchase the gift. It doesn't supply value or place, you know, me, the offeror, under an obligation to give it. I simply provided the gift paid its entire cost and freely offered it. Receiving it, coming to get it is merely the condition upon which you possess what I've already provided. That I think is the biblical model of salvation. Christ paid the entire price. Man contributes no merit whatsoever. But God conditions the receipt of that gracious gift upon repentance and faith. And Scripture expressly distinguishes faith from works because Calvinists also love to say, well your acceptance then is a work. And so, you know, they. And Romans 5 distinguishes this to the one who does not work but believes his faith is counted as righteousness. So faith is not consideration exchanged for salvation. It's the empty hand that receives salvation. The gift is entirely God's. The provision is entirely Christ. And accepting a gift does not mean you earned it.

Leighton Flowers: That's well said. and, you know, you mentioned being accused of, you know, analogizing everything. I do use analogies. I was a youth pastor for many years, and so I like to use stories. I have four kids that are all grown now, but all throughout their life, I always told them stories. I've always loved CS Lewis and Tolkien and others that use stories. Jesus using parables. but it's not analogies versus Scripture. It's. I understand the Scripture through exegetical interpretation, and then I use analogies to help people understand what I'm saying. And so an analogy, for example, that I've used is like, imaginally, there. There's an eternally high rope to heaven, and people, are trying to climb the rope to get to heaven. They're trying through works, good deeds. You know, if I, if I'm good enough, I can make my way to heaven and I'll earn it. And somebody with the good news comes along and says, well, here's. Here's what you need to know. The bad news is it's an eternal high rope, and you can't get there by climbing it. But here's good news. If you stop working, if you stop trying to climb, you let go of that rope and trust in Christ. He can carry you, and he's the only one who can get you there. He's the way, the truth and life. No one gets to the Father except through Christ. And so let go of that rope and trust in Christ. And then a Calvinist jumps in and goes, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, that's a work, too. Letting go and stopping work and trusting in the work of another. That's also a work. And so you can't do that either, unless you were picked unilaterally before you were born, and God causes you to want to let go of the ropes. And we're going, okay, where is that in the Bible? That's not a biblical concept. I understand where you've cobbled that together with your systematic. But that's not what the plain reading of the text says. The Scripture says to trust in Christ. That's what you're to do. What must I do to be saved? Paul doesn't answer. Going, well? Nothing. I mean, either you're elect or you're not. And if you are elect, then you know you'll believe and follow. But if you're, you know, he doesn't get into any of that. He just calls them to faith and repentance. Now the Calvinist may step in and say, well that's all we do too. But your doctrinal system doesn't say that's all we do too. Your doctrinal systems and your statements go further than that to say ultimately that God's the one responsible for what he says we're responsible for. He's the one responsible for causing you to ultimately repent and believe. And that's just not in my estimation, anything that the Bible ever supports. The Calvinist will often treat faith as if it's this, you know, this gift. Almost like, you know, we're like cell phones and you have to download the app, otherwise it doesn't have this capac to do this thing unless you download the app. And like faith is this app that God has to download into our hard drive and give us the ability to trust in him. They treated faith as if it's this power of some sort or this merit of some sort. Well, faith, is just another word for allegiance or trust. And people put allegiance and trust in all kinds of things. Some put it in science, some put it in Buddha, some put it in Confucius, some put it in, you know, science and atheism and all the kinds of things. everybody puts faith and trust, allegiance towards all kinds of things.

What makes faith powerful is not the faith in and of itself

What makes it powerful is not the faith in and of itself. It's the one in whom you're putting your faith in. And so when I put my trust in Christ, it's powerful because Christ is powerful. If I put my trust in Buddha, it's not powerful because Buddha's a made up fat dude, okay? It's not powerful. So the faith is not a power or a merit. It's a trust or an allegiance to somebody who has the power and the merit. And so a lot of times people misunderstand this and they treat faith as if it's this meritorious power or source of this, like this thing that earns our way to heaven or gets us saved. And that God downloads it into some people, the electricity and the rest of everybody else just doesn't have this app in their hard drive and they just can't do it because they weren't picked. It's not what allegiance ever means. Throughout Scripture he calls us to not put our allegiance in ourselves, in the science of the world and the worldly things and false gods in statues, and symbols. He says, put your faith in the one who has the power to save, and that is Christ. And everyone has the ability to put their allegiance into something or someone, and that's your choice. That's why you're held responsible, because you're actually able to respond to the truth of God's revelation.

Jenna Ellis: What a great point that, you know, even those who don't accept Christ, they put their faith and trust and belief in other things in something. And so clearly they're able to do that. and the Calvinist couldn't refute that in terms of saying, okay, well, if people are able to put their trust and faith in everything except God unless they first are regenerated, that again is a logical inconsistency.

Most people hear this debate in terms of Calvinism versus Arminianism

And so, you know, with, with this whole conversation, I want to make sure too that we get to, this point of what is provisionism? So if we are, obviously, you know, rejecting this deterministic, limited atonement sort of theology, but most people have only heard this debate in, the terms of Calvinism versus Arminianism. What is provisionism?

Leighton Flowers: Well, it is similar to Arminianism in many ways. I mean, both Arminians and Provisionists believe that anyone can be saved, that God loves, genuinely loves all people, salvifically wanting them to all be saved. And so there's a lot of similarities there. but Arminius, Jacobus. Arminius is what the term Arminian is based on. He was a student of Geneva. I think he, he was born around the time that Calvin died. And so they never actually debated themselves. But Arminius, growing up in Geneva, began to question some of the Calvinistic doctrines and some of those same points that we have today that were eventually brought to the Council of Dort and the Synod of Dort and all the things that the remonstrance and that gets into the history of it. That's how these five points developed is through that. And that's why it's often categorized as either Calvinists or Arminians. But Arminius was raised in Geneva and so I think he had some baggage that he carried over from his Calvinism. And one of those points of baggage was this concept and idea that yes, we are born totally depraved in the same sense. The Calvinist says that we are dead corpse, like dead, and therefore we have to be made alive in order to believe, despite the fact that The Bible says, for example, in Jon 20:31, that these things were written so that you might believe and that by believing you might have life. In other words, you believe in Christ. You come to Christ to get life. You're not given life in order to come to Christ. Jon 5:40, same thing. He says to the Pharisees, you refuse to come to me so that you may have life. He doesn't say, I've refused to give you life so that you would certainly come to me. It's always throughout Scripture saying, you come to the life giver in order to get life. You're not unilaterally given life to come to the life giver. And so we believe the Calvinist has swamped that order. And some of the Arminians have kind of bought into that language and said, yes, we do need to be at least made partially alive or partially regenerated. We have to be given our free will back. And so on. The Armenian structure, it's as if the Fall, and I guess they would have to say that God's the one who designed it this way, because who else would, I mean, who else has the power to design it this way, but that the Fall caused all people to lose this ability to will. And he preveniently. Prevenient grace is what arming and siege. He preveniently gives it back to everybody so as to give them a choice. And so I just see that as unnecessary baggage. I just believe that God created us in his image and we have this capacity, and that's the Fall. Nothing about the Fall and the Genesis account says we lost this capacity. I think those are misinterpreted texts that, that have carried over into some of the Arminian streams. Now, when you study this through Wesleyan, Armenians and the different stripes of Armenians, some of them do take differing views of prevenient grace and aligns a little bit more with what the provisionist holds to. and so, for example, I think it's Wesley, and I can't be for sure of this, but because it's secondhand, somebody told me this, but that Wesley believed that the cross itself was a prevenient grace. And from that point forward, once the cross happened, it gave everybody back the free will. Again. Sounds like a good idea, but where is that in the Bible? I, just don't see it anywhere taught in Scripture. And so it seems to me that, that many within the Armenian camp, they want to placate the Calvinistic claim and avoid being called a Pelagian or semi Pelagian, even though Calvinists still call them that. No matter what they say, they don't want to be labeled a heretic or you know, back in the day, get burned at the stake because they would burn them at the stake for saying a lot of the things that I say today. And so a lot of the people would avoid, trying to claim that humans have this capacity to listen to the grace and the goodness of God's revelation and truth and respond willingly or unwillingly to it. I mean, it's their choice to accept. They can suppress the truth and unrighteousness and remain in bondage, or they can accept the truth. somebody can grow hardened if they continue to rebel. And so they can become in a place of inability. But they're not born that way. the Bible talks about they close their eyes, they refused to believe, they became hardened. It didn't say they were born that way. And then it even goes on to say in Acts 28, otherwise they might see here, understand and turn, and I would heal them. And then he says, now I take the message to the Gentiles because they'll listen. So cast ultimately contrasting the Jewish people who are sticks in the mud or old wineskin who are hardened with the gentiles who are, yes, woefully immoral people. But they were still willing to listen because they hadn't become self righteous and hardened in their rebellion against the things of God like the Israelites had.

Jenna Ellis: That.

Leighton Flowers: So this is not a condition from birth to be ever seeing and ever perceiving. It's a condition specific to those who have become so, you know, captured in their religiosity and their self righteousness that they can't see and understand who their own Messiah is. And that that is a condition of a specific group of people at a specific time, all of which we have the potential to become. The Bible even warns us, don't harden your heart when you hear his voice like the people did in the desert. we can all become hardened. But you're not born that way. You can become that if you continue to reject and suppress the truth of God's word. And so the whole Calvinistic system, which some Arminians have adopted the concepts of, have basically carried that over to say, yes, we are totally depraved from birth, but prevenient grace fixes us and gives us our free will back. And I just think that that's baggage carried over from Geneva. That's not necessary.

Jenna Ellis: M. Yeah. And all of that, you know, it's, it's such a great explanation of, you know, why this matters what, what provisionism says. And it's not, you know, that we, we should want to adhere to one specific doctrine over the other. The whole point of all of this and this entire conversation and any conversation about theology is to ultimately know and understand and rightly interpret, the. The Scriptures and rightly divide truth from error. And, and this is where these conversations do matter. And It's so fascinating to me that Calvinists tend to only focus so much of their attention on this one doctrine, almost to, Almost the exclusion of a lot of others. And that's not, you know, that's a generalized statement. I mean, a lot of Calvinists do a lot of deep study, you know, like Jon MacArthur, into all, the entire Scripture as a whole. I mean, you know, he spent his entire ministry at Grace Community Church and on Grace to youo, talking about, you know, literally every verse in Scripture. And it's fascinating to me as well, just as a. As an anecdotal response to, to, you know, the people who say, well, wow, you know, you've. You've been around Jon MacArthur. A lot of, you know, represented him. And And you don't understand Calvinism clearly. And I'm thinking, okay, is if I was around Jon MacArthur, which I was, for, you know, several years, and then had, you know, close friendship with him until he passed away, last year, that's actually an indictment of Jon to say that somehow, you know, he. I could be around him for that long and not understand the doctrine that they hold him up as being one of their best champions. So I think that's actually very disrespectful to Jon. But also, Also, Just from my own experience, I had conversations with Jon about. And I was the one that actually opened them and said, you know, hey, I would love to talk about limited atonement. And you know, what, you understand, because here's where. Where I've understood this and we had these conversations. It was never contentious. It was never. He was never condescending.

John MacArthur never accused me of being unintelligent or unstudied

He never accused me of being, you know, unintelligent or unstudied, or too emotional, you know, those kinds of things. But he also never pressed that this was something that I needed to, to change or to reconcile if I was to become, you know, a true Christian or enlightened. I mean, he never thought that this was, Or expressed to me that this was some great detriment in my theology, that I couldn't possibly be a sincere Christian if I didn't profess These things. And, and I think that that speaks to where this debate should be in the context of soteriology generally, that this truly is an in house debate and that reasonable people can disagree and that we should want to discuss these things and understand them. But ultimately, I don't think that that Jon was not saved because we disagree. And I don't think he thought that I wasn't saved, you know, and so this is where a lot of these personal attacks can go, you know, well beyond what the actual merit of the debate is. And so why do you think, Leighton, that this is such a, fixation and obsession with Calvinists, this one doctrine compared to everything else?

Leighton Flowers: Well, I can only speak for myself as a Calvinist. When I came to believe Calvinism was actually reading a Jon MacArthur book, Ashamed of the Gospel, where he was talking about the pragmatism of the church and the church becoming too much like the world and too entertainment focused and really not preaching exegetically through the scriptures and letting truth be our guide, but instead entertainment being our guide and trying to get more people in the seats regardless of what we sacrifice. And I still resonate very much with what MacArthur was teaching in that book. But there was a section on the sovereignty of God, that he wrote in there talking about Calvinism. And that was my first introduction to Calvinism. When I was 19 years old, I was actually on the mission field in Belarus, Russia area. And reading this book at night and just, I was like flabbergasted reading it. I was like, why haven't I never been taught this? You know, and, and then of course you have somebody as articulate as MacArthur taking you to Romans 9 and Ephesians 1. And I'd never really studied those before as a 19 year old. And I'm going to. Where has this been? In my Sunday school class. You know, why has anybody ever told me this? I was chosen. God picked me. the reason I have faith is because God caused it. I didn't know these things. And it was just kind of like I did a deep dive while I was on the mission field into this study and trying to understand it. And so it became one of those things that for a couple of years I went back to Hardin, Simmons, there was, I was a freshman sophomore the next year and I just started talking about it all the time. I became one of what they call a cage stage Calvinist where I'm trying to convert everybody into Calvinism. Like what, did you know this? Did you, have you ever read this? Look at this. I mean I remember in one of my Bible classes we were supposed to stand and deliver. It was one of those learning how to preach seminars and you had to stand and read a chapter. And of course what did I pick? I picked Romans 9 because I was a new Calvinist. I want everybody to read this because obviously they didn't know it. And I thought if I just read the Bible and I read this verse I'm going to make all these people become Calvinists because this is just so obvious. And so I think a lot of Calvinists are kind of still there. They kind of feel like the rest of the world just doesn't see it the way they see it. And it's something that people just need to know and hear and it really is based, and I'm not saying this in a mean way, it's based out of ignorance. I know it was for me of the other side. I didn't know how the non Calvinistic scholars understood Romans 9 yet or Ephesians 1 or the major proof text. I hadn't really studied the other side. I had just been introduced by a really convincing person. This is the way you're supposed to understand it. And so I just swallowed it hook, line and sinker. And there are many Calvinists that are still in that camp where they've never really taken the time to understand what Romans 9 means from a provisionist perspective or from even an Arminian perspective. and they've only been taught one way to think about it and therefore they see anybody else that doesn't think the way they do as being anti biblical or just not caring about the word of God. Or maybe you haven't even seen Romans 9 yet. I've literally wrote a book on Romans 9. My dissertation has a large section on Romans 9. ever since I was 19 years old when I was introduced. I've been studying this for my entire adult life and I still have people quoting Romans 9 at me as if I have never read it. and as if that's just the best rebuttal they can possibly come up with and I just have to point them out. You know brothers, I understand the way you're feeling it. You Armenians often quote Jon 3:16 at you, Calvinist, thinking you've never read it before. You're doing the same thing to us. And the better thing to do is to go back and look at the source material, look at the best of the best scholars from both perspective, hear out what they're saying and be a good, berean be objective and back away and drop your presuppositions as much as you possibly can, remove the lenses that you've looked through the text through and say, could this be a way in which I understand this text that I haven't thought of before? That takes a lot of discipline. It's very difficult to put down a way of thinking or a particular viewpoint if you've come to love and you know, really be attached to a particular way of seeing things. And, and that's what I went through about when I was around 30 years old. I started reading A.W. tozer, who's not a Calvinist, who I highly respected, C.S. lewis and many other scholars. I began to read them and try to understand the other side better and slowly begin just to be disillusioned with much of what Calvinism was claiming and begin to understand. Oh, that's the way they understand Romans 9. They're not just idiots, you know, that don't believe in Romans 9. They just see it from a different perspective. And I finally came to understand that perspective and I saw that it was actually reasonable. I still was a Calvinist when I saw that it was reasonable, but I saw at least that they had an answer. And then it was only after time that I began to see, well, that that way of understanding Romans 9 actually aligns better with chapter 11 too. So how do Calvinist answer chapter 11? And then I would become very disillusioned with how they dealt with chapter 11 because it seemed like they just jumped ship from the individual reading of chapter nine and moved to a corporate reading in chapter 11. And I'm like, why can't you be consistent nine through 11 and read it corporately like the non Calvinists do? And it just one thing after another. I began to ask, you know, questions about the parables. Why is Jesus speaking to them in parables? To keep them from believing. If total inability is true, they can't believe. Even if Jesus didn't use parables, why would he use parables? To make sure they don't believe in order to make sure he gets to the cross. Well that doesn't make any sense. Why would you harden somebody who's already born, completely hardened by nature? Just things like that begin to pop up in my mind. And so I just challenge Calvinists. Before you reject what we're saying, understand what we're saying. Don't just assume that you're right, really begin to question whether or not maybe you've misunderstood these texts. And I think every side of the Aisle should be open to learning and being taught by the word of God, and learn what the scripture is saying in its first century context, instead of ways the way it's been westernized and the baggage that's been added to it over the centuries.

Christianity should always be open to having conversations about soteriology

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, so well said. And I think that is really the point of why we're having these conversations, because, the Calvinists often will. And, I've seen this in a lot of the responses to, both you and me and Dinesh online saying, well, your views on soteriology are just based on your church tradition, and this is just based on your tradition, not your actual study. Well, that can be true for either side. And so this is why, always being open to having these conversations and saying, okay, am I rightly dividing truth from error? I mean, if someone comes to me and says, hey, this is, you know, the way that we should view scripture, and you've been interpreting it wrong, I'll listen to them. That doesn't necessarily mean I will change my mind and that I will be convinced, but I should always be willing to hear and be open to, the conversation, because I want to pursue truth and I want to know God better. And that's where we should have the focus on the merit of the conversation, not the debate around the debate.

Leighton Flowers: We should have these conversations about biblical theology

And so, Latent Flowers, we've got to end it here. I mean, there's so much more, as you said in your broadcast, you know, it was. We could go another two hours, on all of this. But this is why, not just in the context of soteriology, but in all aspects of a, systematic theology and all throughout Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, we should have these conversations. We should do a deep dive. We should study these things so that we can know God and know the truth. And so, if this has been kind of eye opening to you, and, perhaps, you know, you didn't know what provisionism said, or, you know, you're just interested in learning more about this. You can go to Soteriology 101. you can get Leighton's books. You can also, see all of his broadcasts on his YouTube channel. And, I would really encourage everyone who's listening to this broadcast, to first and foremost be open to the truth, to do that deep study, but also to be gracious in these conversations, in these debates. Because the goal should never be just to win the debate. The goal should be to arrive at a better understanding of truth. And that's why we should discuss the. These things. So Leighton, really appreciate it. And again, you. Do you want to. To point, out any other resources or, you know, other ways that people can follow you?

Leighton Flowers: No. Thank you for. For giving that information. There's three books that are all available online. If you just typed in my name, and I'm Amazon, they would come up children's book included, that I wrote with my son. And so feel free to check out that material. Also, Dinesh is going to be debating, a French philosopher, Bingyong, who wrote a book on this subject, who's, of course, more on the Calvinistic side. And I think it's coming up on September 10th. and so there's information online about that, too, so I'm interested to hear how that's going to go. I think it's going to be an interesting conversation. Nothing.

Jenna Ellis: Yes, I'll be tuning in as well, and, look forward to the, you know, the online comments and as we continue engaging in this debate. But, but thank you so much for your participation in this and, for having all of these resources available. I've learned a lot, from you and have found ways to better articulate, the biblical position, as I see it, and interpret scripture. And, obviously we want to arrive at the truth. And so thank you for the work that you do, Latent Flowers, and as always, for taking the time to join our broadcast. I know this is, such a great ministry, to our American Family Radio audience and everyone who listens to the podcast as well, so thank you so much.

Leighton Flowers: Thank you.